A Civilisation Of Chance, A Nation Of Chancers

From Cabinet Magazine:

Rolling the Dice: An Interview amongst Jackson Lears

In belatedly trammel 2005, the online gaming empi­re known equally PartyGaming— domicile of the wildly lucrative website PartyPoker.com—announced that it would ask hold its companionship populace on the London stock market. Speculators predicted that, on the opened upward market, PartyGaming would live valued at over $10 billion, but a few poker chips less than the value attributed to the venerable British subdivision shop chain Marks & Spencer. Despite historic attempts to command or marginalize games of opportunity equally a socially disreputable practice, the multibillion-dollar gambling manufacture inward both its virtual as well as physical incarnations—from online poker websites to lottery tickets as well as off-track betting parlors to suburban casinos as well as the emergence of Las Vegas equally a cultural capital—seems to ask hold never been stronger or to a greater extent than resilient.

In his recent mass Something for Nothing: Luck inward America (2003), Jackson Lears, the Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University as well as the editor-in-chief of Raritan, asserts that gambling is a fundamental element of contemporary culture. Lears argues that this is non because Americans are a state of gamblers per se, but because gambling is a modern distillation of what tin sack best live described equally a “culture of chance.” For Lears, the concept of opportunity as well as its diverse metaphysical siblings Luck, Fortune, as well as Grace ask hold profoundly influenced American life inward everything from personal seem to social policy. With the ascent of the marketplace economic scheme inward the early on nineteenth century, Lears argues, the civilization of opportunity has fought molar as well as smash for survival against the rational appeals of a “culture of control.”

The divinatory dimensions of opportunity through which Americans experienced the world, equally embodied inward games of luck as well as science as well as equally expert yesteryear the confidence human as well as gambler, were transmuted into rational systems of forecasting as well as speculation expert yesteryear the stockbroker as well as solar daytime trader. Trying to predict the hereafter spell trying to keep control, Lears suggests, remains a ritualized element of both religious as well as secular cultures. The gambler’s dice, the soothsayer’s bones, the fortune-teller’s tea leaves, as well as the financier’s econometric charts are to a greater extent than closely aligned than we’ve been led to believe. David Serlin spoke amongst Lears yesteryear telephone inward June 2005.

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Cabinet: How did you lot move interested inward the report of opportunity or, equally you lot telephone telephone it inward your book, the “culture of chance”?

Jackson Lears: There were a lot of dissimilar streams that came together inward this book. Since my get-go book, No Place of Grace, I ask hold idea seriously nigh the cultural longing for transcendence that survived the economical rationality of the nineteenth century. I perceived that at that spot was some sort of longing for grace that animated the impulse to gamble, as well as ane time I had hitting on that hunch I began to honour bear witness of it everywhere. I began to encounter that at that spot were connections betwixt the gambler’s die as well as the soothsayer’s bones. The gambler as well as the diviner were brothers nether the skin. This led me to situate gambling inward the midst of what I telephone telephone a civilization of chance, which includes all sorts of rituals as well as practices that utilisation opportunity equally a means of knowing or a means of trying to discern the volition of the cosmos, the important of the universe, or even—in the illustration of Calvinist casting of lots—the volition of God. The notion of luck is ever communicated equally an unearned gift, a costless gift. Luck, similar grace, is something that happens to you. You don’t earn it. To me, this represented a rattling deep realization at some fundamental grade of the futility of striving as well as trying to command all outcomes, which seems to me at the middle of our dominant culture, whether inward religious or secular forms. I began to encounter gambling as well as the civilization of opportunity equally a sort of counterpoint to this.

The other current that fed my involvement inward opportunity came nigh spell I was on a subway scheme platform inward Manhattan. I was waiting inward a curt business to purchase a subway scheme token as well as noticed that at that spot was a much longer business adjacent to mine, snaking all the means approximately the platform, for the lottery machine. This was 1994. Newt Gingrich as well as his buddies had but won a huge victory inward Congress, the “Contract amongst America” was inward the air, as well as at that spot were all sorts of messages directed at Americans to ask hold responsibleness for their ain economical fate, delineate themselves upward yesteryear their bootstraps, as well as reject welfare as well as other “handouts” that they didn’t deserve. The rhetoric of the self-made human was making a comeback. I looked approximately at these people waiting inward business for the lottery ticket as well as I thought, these people run hard, but the fact that they’re inward this lottery business suggests that they realize, at their core, that difficult run is non the whole story. Sometimes you lot but ask hold to grab a break. And catching a intermission is basically the secular American version of grace.

Cabinet:  Was this epiphany—seeing working people spending their hard-earned coin on lottery tickets—the rootage of the distinction that you lot delineate throughout your mass betwixt the “culture of chance” as well as the “culture of control”?

Jackson Lears:  What I wanted to exhibit inward this mass is that at that spot was, as well as continues to be, a huge overlap betwixt the civilization of control, which relies on some predictability as well as systematic administration of fate, as well as the civilization of chance, which is much less for sure that diligence is the solely path to success as well as is willing sometimes to curlicue the dice. These 2 cultures non solely overlap, but they interpenetrate each other. One finds some combination of opportunity as well as command working together, whether you’re talking nigh sports or investment or religious faith. Some imagine life equally a serial of calculated risks, to a greater extent than similar a poker game than a lottery, inward which people realize that they can’t command all outcomes; but some also wishing to live able to utilisation their skills to their best advantage, equally ane does inward poker. Yet, at the same time, people recognize that they cannot command all outcomes as well as that, inward the end, luck volition play a role equally well, as well as nosotros ask hold to admit its power.

We honour this invariable coexistence of opportunity as well as command on Wall Street as well as inward the history of speculation. People debate whether or non speculation is mere gambling or whether it’s an investment. Huge sums of coin are spent yesteryear investment banking firms as well as brokerage houses to persuade people that, inward fact, they aren’t taking a endangerment when they invest as well as that they tin sack pose their portfolios together inward diverse ways that tin sack minimize if non eliminate endangerment altogether. Of course, anyone who claims they tin sack eliminate endangerment ought to live brought upward instantly on charges earlier the USA Securities as well as Exchange Commission.

Cabinet:  Your mass describes how the civilization of command secularized some of the religious or spiritual elements of chance. So is the oxymoronic concept of the “safe risk” or “safe beta” purpose of that procedure of secularization? There’s an unspoken sense that a “safe beta” is non a bet at all; it’s almost a guarantee, such equally when aspiring students position a college equally their “safety school.”

Jackson Lears:  That’s ane of the paradoxes that nosotros await at every solar daytime inward the civilization of capitalism. On the ane hand, at that spot has to live this hope of a magical wages of wealth without work; at the same time, this magic has to live stabilized as well as rationalized as well as made to seem predictable inward gild to cancel out, or threaten to cancel out, the elements of luck as well as risk. Since the plough of the terminal century, folks similar J.P. Morgan ask hold attempted to brand speculative capitalism seem condom as well as predictable. Of course, this falls apart completely inward the Great Depression as well as solely begins to emerge ane time to a greater extent than inward the long bull marketplace of the 1980s as well as 1990s. But at that spot is something quite misleading nigh the endeavor to live reassuring on the dependent area of risk, to state that what is truly a endangerment is non a endangerment but is, inward fact, a condom option. I’m reminded of the celebrity cowboy Roy Rogers’s adieu to his faithful TV viewers inward the 1950s, as well as it seems to me to live the signature advice of that era: “Be brave, but don’t ask hold chances.” This is a perfectly self-canceling sentence. It says, inward effect, “Experience the frisson of bravery, the excitement, the pleasance of feeling similar you lot are doing something heroic. But never bet on anything less than a for sure thing.”

Human beings wishing the excitement of risk, but they also wishing the security that comes amongst containing its worst possibilities. I recall that, inward some ways, these paired desires capture the dialectic I was trying to larn at inward my book. The civilization of command is non but rooted inward a wishing to dominate other people as well as the environment. It is rooted inward a wishing that is but equally natural, I think, as well as equally universal as well as timeless equally the wishing for endangerment as well as doubtfulness as well as luck, as well as that’s the wishing for stability as well as predictability....MUCH MORE